Characterization of Extremely Drug-Resistant and HypervirulentAcinetobacter baumanniiAB030

Acinetobacter baumanniiis an important nosocomial bacterial pathogen. Multidrug-resistant isolates ofA. baumanniiare reported worldwide. SomeA. baumanniiisolates display resistance to nearly all antibiotics, making treatment of infections very challenging. As the need for new and effective antibiotics againstA. baumanniibecomes increasingly urgent, there is a need to understand the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and virulence in this organism. In this work, comparative genomics was used to understand the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and virulence in AB030, an extremely drug-resistant and hypervirulent strain ofA. baumanniithat is a representative of a recently emerged lineage ofA. baumanniiInternational Clone V. In order to characterize AB030, we carried out a genomic and phenotypic comparison with LAC-4, a previously described hyper-resistant and hypervirulent isolate. AB030 contains a number of antibiotic resistance- and virulence-associated genes that are not present in LAC-4. A number of these genes are present on mobile elements. This work shows the importance of characterizing the members of new lineages ofA. baumanniiin order to determine the development of antibiotic resistance and virulence in this organism.